This paper is not a defence of
Christendom's
record of anti-Semitism. It has been appalling. It only seeks to defend
the New Testament itself.

It is based on material that I
prepared for
a talk I gave to the Edinburgh branch of the CCJ (Council of Christians
and Jews). It is in response to a booklet by Gareth Lloyd Jones
entitled:
Hard Sayings - Difficult Texts for Jewish-Christian Dialogue, published
by CCJ in 1993. (ISBN 0 900311 23 1). I quote here a fierce attack on
the
New Testament from Eliezer Berkovitz which is cited by Lloyd Jones on
page
3 of the booklet. (Not that Lloyd Jones necessarily agrees with it.)

Christianity's New Testament has been the most
dangerous antisemitic
tract in history. Its hatred-charged diatribes against the Pharisees
and
the Jews have poisoned the hearts and minds of millions and millions of
Christians for almost two millennia. No matter what the deeper
theological
meaning of the hate passages against the Jews might be, in the history
of the Jewish people the New Testament lent its support to oppression,
persecution and mass murder of an intensity and duration that were
unparalleled
in the entire history of man' degradation. Without Christianity's New
Testament,
Hitler's Mein Kampf could never been written. (`Facing the
Truth',
Judaism 27, 1978, p 325)

It is my firm belief that a
fair reading
of the New Testament, together with a commitment to Jesus as Messiah,
Saviour
and Lord, far from leading to anti-Semitism, will lead to a love and
respect
for the Jewish people whether or not they believe in Christ.

It is my contention that much of
the Church's
frightful record of anti-Semitism comes from a very superficial reading
of the New Testament. The best weapon against anti-Semitism is not the
downgrading of the New Testament but a profound understanding of the
heart
of its message about the purpose and meaning of the death of Jesus.

Although the New Testament has
indeed been
greatly misused by the enemies of the Jews it cannot, in principle, be
the only source of anti-Semitism. The reasons are as follows:

The subject of the book of Esther
(written
along time before the New Testament era) is the attempted murder of all
Jews because their "customs are different from all other people".
(Esther 3:8).

Pagan anti-Semitism has also been
documented.See
for example: Sevenster J.N., 1975, The Roots of Pagan Anti-Semitism in
the Ancient World. Published by Brill

Pagan anti-Semitism cannot be
blamed on the
New Testament.

There are also fundamentalist
followers of
another religion who indulge in anti-Semite rhetoric. This cannot be
blamed
on the New Testament.

Anti-Semitism as man's proud
rebellion against
God's election of Israel to be the means of the salvation of the world,
is spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) hundreds of
years
before the New Testament was written.

If we had stopped worshipping our God and prayed to a
foreign
god, you would surely have discovered it, because you know our secret
thoughts.
But it is for Your sake that we are being killed all the time, that we
are treated like sheep to be slaughtered. (Psalm 44: 20-22 GNB)

I will deal with the challenge to
the New
Testament in a series of questions.

1. Does the New
Testament place
the blame for the death of Jesus supremely upon the Jews?

This question is at the root of the
matter.
In a superficial sense it is indeed the Jewish people who reject Jesus
and demand that he be crucified. Yet the New Testament does not see the
death of Jesus as a martyrdom. Although the Jewish people are the main
human instrument in the rejection of Jesus, behind it all is the hand
of
God! Ultimately it is God who did it! All four of the gospel writers,
together
with Paul and Peter in their epistles, make it clear that Jesus came to
this world with the express purpose of allowing humanity to do its
worst
to Him so that He might bear our sin and forgive the world. The New
Testament
writers do not thereby excuse those who rejected Christ - for indeed it
was a heinous sin - but they do see the sins of the Jews as
representing
all human sin. The gospel exposes the whole world as sinful!This is the
theme of the first three chapters of Romans

In other words, only if we ignore
the very
heart of the meaning of the cross of Jesus - as expounded throughout
the
New Testament - as making atonement for the sins of the world, can we
possibly
be self-righteous about Jewish rejection of Jesus. This is made clear
in
so many of our greatest hymns such as the well known words of Charles
Wesley:
"Died He for me who caused His pain, for me who Him to death
pursued."

If we blame the Jews for the death
of Jesus,
how can we say that Christ carried our sins? To use the death of Jesus
as an excuse for anti-Semitism is actually to deny the New Testament
gospel
and reject the Christ offered to us in the New Testament.

However if our religion is merely
devotion
to a martyr - and this is what some popular Christian religion can be -
then we might possibly turn to anti-Semitism.

We also might possibly turn to
anti-Semitism
if we fasten on the word spoken by the crowd and reported in Matthew's
gospel: "His blood be on us and our children". Lloyd Jones
discusses
in detail why Matthew gave us those words. He rightly notes that
earlier
parts of his gospel show that Matthew can hardly be accused of
anti-Jewishness.
My own view is that Matthew reports those words to us simply because
they
were actually spoken by the crowd. He is being a faithful reporter of
what
he had discovered actually to have been the case.+ These words could
only
be an excuse for anti-Semitism if we believe that God and Jesus agreed
with them. Luke (probably a Gentile) reports that Jesus prayed: "Father
forgive them..."!

The New Testament, drawing on the
Hebrew
Scriptures, sees the election of Israel in two ways. Positively they
are
elected to bearers of God's revelation and redemption to the world - to
be a light to the Gentiles. Negatively they are chosen to be the ones
who
- in rejecting the Messiah - would unconsciously bring atonement and
forgiveness
to the world. Jesus and Paul drawing on passages in the Hebrew
Scriptures
- such as Deuteronomy 29:2-4, Isaiah 6:9-10, and Isaiah 42:18-20 - see
the very spiritual blindness and deafness of God's elect people as the
way God chooses to bring sight to the world. This unwitting, but
foreordained,
fulfilment of God's intention is also the theme of John 11:49-53, where
Caiaphas the High Priest makes a decision to sacrifice Jesus for the
sake
of the people.

These positive and negative aspects
of election,
both of which are used by God for His purposes of mercy for all
peoples,
are the main subject of Romans chapters 2,3,9,10 and 11. This is the
greatest
reason of all that Paul insists that God's ancient promises to Israel
will
never be set aside.

2. Does not the New
Testament
attack the Jewish religion as cold-hearted legalism - especially with
reference
to the Pharisees and Scribes?

It certainly does attack the
religion of
the Pharisees as practised at the time of Jesus. I return to that
shortly.
However the heart of the Jewish Faith which are their own Scriptures,
bearing
witness to the true God, are revered as holy by all the New Testament
writers.
When the New Testament speaks of the inspiration of the Scriptures it
is
of course referring to the Jewish Scriptures. The apostles all counted
themselves as Jews and continued to honour the Jewish customs. Jesus
Himself
tells His hearers to obey the teaching of the Pharisees because they
sit
in Moses' seat. (Matt 23:2,3) He goes on to tell them not to do what
the
Pharisees do because they do not practice what they preach. In other
words
he is simply saying that the Religious leaders of the day are failing
badly
to live up to their own religion. This is hardly an attack on the
religion
but only on the way it is being practised. Paul himself, well after his
own conversion to Christ, still refers to himself not only as Jew but a
Pharisee. (Acts 23:6).

So yes indeed Jesus does see the
Pharisees
as betraying the heart of Jewish faith. But in attacking them he is
only
doing what much of what the Hebrew Scriptures themselves do, namely to
strongly condemn the religious and political leadership as unfaithful
to
God. If one wants to read strong condemnation of Jewish leadership and
the nation of Israel one can't beat the writings of Moses, Isaiah,
Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea and many others. It is no good claiming that this
was `in family' criticism. It was criticism from God Himself through
His
prophets. The New Testament claims only to be continuing the same
tradition
from in the family - Jesus and His disciples all being Jewish.

Now to a wider point. It is a
danger for
all religious professionals that they become self-righteous and
legalistic.
This is true not only of Jewish leaders but also Christian leaders of
all
theological persuasions. The reason the whole Bible speaks about the
self-righteousness
of the Jewish religious establishment is the obvious one that it was
written
by Jews in a Jewish context. Similarly the New Testament contains much
that is deeply critical of current Christian leadership in such
Churches
as Corinth, Galatia, Thesalonica and many others. The Apostle Paul
warns
that the same conceit and self-righteousness that afflicted Jewish
religious
leadership will also affect Christian leadership.(Romans 11:17-25).
Church
history has shown us that Paul's warning was well justified. The very
sins
that led the Jewish establishment to reject Jesus have deeply affected
the Christian Church throughout its history. It may acknowledge Jesus
with
its lips but its heart can still be far from Him. (See Isaiah 29:13 and
Matt 15:8) It is part of our human sinfulness to misuse our God-given
religious
doctrines and practices to try to justify ourselves before God rather
than
acknowledge that we live only by His grace and mercy.

The New Testament, then, does not
teach that
the Jewish religion will be permanently legalistic and the Christian
religion
will always be marked by grace. Its denunciation of religious legalism
is directed at Jewish and Christian leadership.

3. Does not John's
Gospel seem
to attack Jews as Jews?

Here I acknowledge there is a
problem. The
problem is, though, not one of John's gospel itself but of its English
translations. The passages that are often quoted are:

John 5:16-18 16 So, because Jesus was doing
these things
on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. 17 Jesus said to them, "My
Father
is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." 18 For
this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he
breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father,
making
himself equal with God. (NIV)

Here and in many other passages the
villains
are identified as the Jews. Speaking to the same group of people Jesus
says in John 8:44:

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want
to carry
out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not
holding
to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his
native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (NIV)

The Greek word translated `Jew' is
the word
`Ioudaios'. This is of course a legitimate translation except in the
context
of John's gospel where in these polemical passages it must have either
meant the Jewish leadership in Judea or the Jewish inhabitants of Judea
(and not the Jewish inhabitants of Galilee.) In the context of John's
gospel
it could not have meant the Jewish people as a whole. The reason for
this
is that John identifies Jesus Himself as a Jew (John 4:9) and later in
the same chapter Jesus says to the Samaritan woman (vs22):

You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we
worship
what we do know, for salvation is of the Jews. (NIV)

John 7:1 makes the distinction
between the
hostility to Jesus from the Judean Jews and the relatively friendly
reception
He received from the Galilean Jews. These reasons alone show
conclusively
that Jesus' words of condemnation against the Jews cannot have been
meant
to refer to the Jewish people as a whole.

This leads me to a wider question
that goes
beyond John's gospel.

4. Is not the New
Testament claim
that (a) Jesus is the Messiah and (b) the Jews are wrong to reject that
belief, a form of anti-Semitism?

It is a form of anti-Semitism only
if anti-Semitism
means a failure to agree with Judaism! But that is to trivialise the
meaning
of the word. Of course a statement such as: "Jesus is the Messiah, the
only Lord and Saviour of the world", contradicts Judaism. It also
contradicts
Islam, Hinduism and Atheism!

The Jewish claim that Jesus is not
the Messiah
is equally an anti-Christian statement. Its assertion that the Torah is
the Word of God is an anti-Islamic declaration because Islam teaches
that
the Torah was written as the result of the Jews distorting the true
Word
of God which had been given to them.

We simply have to acknowledge that
religions
do contradict one another in fundamental areas of belief. This should
not
be a cause for hatred but dialogue in a spirit of humility and
love.

This leads to our next question.

5. Does not the New
Testament
command the Christian to evangelise the Jews, and is this not a threat
to the Jewish people?

Yes it does command us to
evangelise the
Jews, but not only the Jews - also the whole world. Similarly the
Hebrew
Scriptures (Eg: Isaiah 42:6-8, 60 (whole chapter), Micah 4:1-7 promise
the Jews that the light given to Israel will convert other nations so
that
Pagan idol worshippers may acknowledge the God of Israel as the true
God.
Incidentally Moses, and the Hebrew Prophets together with the Psalms of
David are now known and loved throughout much of originally pagan
Europe,
the Americas, China, and black Africa - through the missionary work of
the Christian Church.

They too are called, by their
Scriptures,
to be evangelists!

It is the New Testament belief that
when
a Pagan turns to Christ he is no longer a Pagan. However the New
Testament
does show us clearly that when Jews became believers in Jesus they did
not have to give up their Jewishness. Paul, who was so insistent that
Pagan
converts to Christ must not become Jews in order to become Christians,
did himself, as a Jew, continue to observe all the Jewish customs.

Christian evangelization of Jews is
only
a threat to Jewish people if a fundamental definition of being a Jew is
someone who does not believe in Jesus. Why this should be a fundamental
definition is unclear since Jews who become Buddhists - such as Ben
Gurion
- are still regarded as Jews.

Even if it be granted (and I don't
grant
it) that Jewishness is contradicted by belief in Jesus, then we have to
remind ourselves that the Jewish demand that Christians do not
evangelise
is a demand that Christians disobey Christ - and thus a demand that
they
give up Christianity!I agree with many Christian thinkers that
Christians
can only speak to Jews about Jesus in a spirit of repentance for all
the
evil done to the Jews in the name of Jesus. It is the Church's
appalling
record in regard to the Jews which is the biggest single factor in
hiding
the true Jesus from the Jewish people.

I also believe it to be reasonable
and right
for such organisations as: `The Council of Christians and Jews', to
forbid
its Christian members from using it as a vehicle for evangelism. This
would
be to defeat its right and good purpose as an organisation for learning
about one another's traditions in a relaxed environment.

6. Does not Jesus
prophecy the
destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish state?

I quote such passages as the
following:

Luke 21:5-6 5 Some of his disciples were remarking
about
how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts
dedicated
to God. But Jesus said, 6 "As for what you see here, the time will come
when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be
thrown
down."

Luke 21:20-24a 20 "When you see Jerusalem being
surrounded by
armies, you will know that its desolation is near. 21 Then let those
who
are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and
let those in the country not enter the city. 22 For this is the time of
punishment in fulfilment of all that has been written. 23 How dreadful
it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There
will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. 24
They
will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the
nations.(NIV)

This is a reiteration of many of
the themes
of the Hebrew Prophets who were drawing on the teaching of Moses, such
as:

Deut 28:64-67 64 Then the LORD will scatter you
among all
nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship
other gods-- gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers
have known. 65 Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting
place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you an
anxious
mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. 66 You will live
in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure
of your life. 67 In the morning you will say, "If only it were
evening!"
and in the evening, "If only it were morning!"-- because of the terror
that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.
(NIV)

Moses and the prophets always give
a final
hope for Israel and promise that exile will not be forever. For example:

Deut 30:3-5 3 then the LORD your God will restore
your fortunes
and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations
where
he scattered you. 4 Even if you have been banished to the most distant
land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you
and
bring you back. 5 He will bring you to the land that belonged to your
fathers,
and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous
and
numerous than your fathers. (NIV)

The question before us is whether
or not
Jesus in these passages in which he speaks of the scattering of Israel
teaches that the scattering is forever.

Luke 21:24 They will fall by the sword and will be
taken
as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the
Gentiles
until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. (NIV)

Clearly, whatever the phrase: `the
times
of the Gentiles' refers to, part of the meaning of the sentence is that
the scattering of Israel is not forever. Paul, too, in Romans 11 speaks
of the falling of Israel as only temporary. (For my
view
of the current peace process in the Middle East click
here.)

7. Does not the New
Testament
teach that the Church has replaced Israel in God's purposes?

Those who believe it does might
rightly note
that through the preaching of the Apostles in the power of the Holy
Spirit
Gentiles were brought to Christ and so became spiritual descendants of
Abraham.(Galatians 3:6-9). Even though they were not physically
circumcised,
they became what Paul calls the 'circumcision'(Phil.3:2,3; Romans
2:25-29;Col.2:11
etc.). By this Paul meant that the gospel had cut sin from the heart.
This
is the true 'circumcision of the heart' that matters in God's eyes.
Even
the Hebrew Scriptures give the same teaching. (Deut 30.6; Jer.9.26;
Ezek.44.7ff).
The Gentiles were grafted into Israel so that the Church began to
inherit
the many spiritual blessings that God had promised Israel of
old.(Romans
11:17-19). The Apostle Peter uses the ancient titles given to Israel
and
applies them to the Church:

You are a Chosen People, a Royal Priesthood, a Holy
Nation, a
People belonging to God....- 1Peter 2.9 (Compare these titles
with:
Isaiah 43.10,20; 44.1-2; 61.6; Deut 4:20; 7.6; 14.2 and many
others)

The New Testament, especially the
Apostle
Paul, makes it quite clear that the way of salvation is by 'faith' and
not the works of the Jewish law. He tells us that this is also the
teaching
of the Hebrew Scriptures and is not a new teaching that begins with the
New Testament. (Romans 2,3,4 and the whole of the letter to the
Galatians.)

It is true that the New Testament
does teach
that the Church, being grafted into Israel, does inherit much that was
purposed for Israel but that does not mean that Israel is now cast
aside.
Why not? To answer this I must refer to what was said in answer to
question
1 above.

It is precisely because the Gentile
Church
owes its salvation to the Jewish rejection of Jesus, (and this was
God's
foreordained purpose), that God has not forgotten His promise to them.
This is the overwhelming reason why Paul in Romans 3 and 11 gives a
resounding
'NO' to his question 'Has God cast them off?'. The whole New Testament
teaches that Israel's rejection of Jesus was not an accident. As was
said
above, one of the reasons God chose them was that their sin would
represent
all sin, so that God might bear the sins of the whole world in the
Person
of Jesus.

Lastly in this section I quote the
words
of the writer to the Hebrews:

By calling this covenant `new' (The New Testament) he
(God) has
made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and ageing will soon
disappear.(Heb 8:13).

In the context of the argument of
the Letter
to the Hebrews the author is referring to the system of animal
sacrifices
in the Temple which has indeed been superseded by the sacrifice of
Christ.
However numerous passages in the Old Testament itself tell us that
animal
sacrifice - though given by God - was not the essence of the religion
of
Israel but was meant to point to something greater.The sacrificial
system
of the Temple is seen as transitory and is even deprecated in such
passages
in the Hebrew Scriptures as: 1 Sam 15:22, Psalm 50:9-15, 51:16-17,
69:30-31,
Isaiah 1:11-15, Jeremiah 6:20, Hosea 6:6, Amos 5:21-23, and Micah 6:6-7

Judaism has survived for nearly two
thousand
years without any Temple or animal sacrifices.

8. What is the New
Testament's
view of the final destiny of Israel?

"I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly
not pass
away until all these things have happened. 33 Heaven and earth will
pass
away, but my words will never pass away." (Luke 21:32-33 32
NIV)

What does Jesus mean by `this
generation
will not pass away'? The Greek word translated `generation' is `genea'.
I believe he is paraphrasing the words of Jeremiah who speaks of God's
determination to preserve the family or descendants of Israel until the
foundations of the heavens and earth pass away. The Greek Old Testament
(called the Septuagint or LXX) which was used by Jesus has the same
word
`genea' translated `descendants' in the following passage.

Jeremiah 31:35-37 35 This is what the LORD says, he who
appoints
the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by
night,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar-- the LORD Almighty is his
name: 36 "Only if these decrees vanish from my sight," declares the
LORD,
"will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me."
37
This is what the LORD says: "Only if the heavens above can be measured
and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject
all
the descendants of Israel because of all they have done," declares the
LORD. (NIV)

Finally in this section I refer to
Acts 1:6-8
where we read:

6 So when the disciples met together, they asked Jesus,
"Lord,
are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" 7 He said
to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has
set
by his own authority. 8 But you shall receive power when the Holy
Spirit
comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all
Judea
and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (NIV)

The disciples are asking Jesus if
the promises
of the Hebrew Scriptures about the final destiny of Israel are about to
be fulfilled. Popular Christian teaching has been that Jesus tells the
disciples that they are wrong to ask such a question because the
destiny
of Israel has been superseded by the Church. But that is not what Jesus
says. He is simply saying that it will not be accomplished in their
life
time - only God knows when He will bring it to pass. Their task is to
preach
the gospel to Jews and Gentiles in all nations.

Conclusion.

The New Testament attitude to God's
ancient
people the Jews who do not believe in Jesus is summarised in the
following
words of the apostle Paul in Romans 11:28-32:

28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies
on your
account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account
of the patriarchs, 29 for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30
Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received
mercy
as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become
disobedient
in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy
to you. 32 For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he
may
have mercy on them all. (NIV)

The best way to counter
anti-Semitism in
the Christian Church is to take the New Testament at its face value and
take to heart the core of its message about the point of the death of
Jesus
in the purposes of God for the salvation of the world.

Lastly the Hebrew Scriptures and
the New
Testament both make clear that God's special election of Israel was
never
meant to be favouritism. God loves all peoples equally. The Jews have
never
had a better or worse chance than anyone else of going to heaven. God
chose
them for a purpose and will preserve them to the end - not as His
favourites
- but as a sign to the world that His Word is true. All peoples live
only
by His grace, and all nations, churches and individuals, one day, must
give an account of themselves to Him.